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The Star Larvae Hypothesis
Nature's Plan for Humankind
Part 3. Space Brains

Quantum Theology

Resolving the proton crisis through oneiric intent, the universe heals itself through its own subjectivity.

The prospect of technologically mediated lucid dreaming among the networked and enriched brains of extraterrestrials suggests a mechanism for manufacturing protons through an application of the quantum "observer effect".

Whew.

Building on the work of neurologists and dream researchers, physicist Fred Alan Wolf proposes in his book,"The Dreaming Universe," that the dream state and quantum mechanics enjoy a special relationship. He proposes that individual identities, such as humans possess, evolve out of the indeterminate and ambiguous experiences that characterize dreams. He goes on to propose that preconscious mental processing involves neural structures that compare superposed quantum states in the brain to construct a particular self awareness from among the superposed possibilities. The process parallels that by which particular empirical events condense out of quantum superpositions.

Quantum collapse into particular, objective events and the collapse of indeterminate dream (preconscious) states into particular subjective events are concomitant processes. Each is a reduction of multiple possibilities into an actuality that has both an objective and a subjective nature. In this model, gravitational self-collapse of a quantum superposition occurs when the superposed mass attains a magnitude that causes it to perceive itself, or that corresponds to it perceiving itself, the perception being the subjective correlate of the collapse of the quantum indeterminacy into a determinate event. The process that locates mass also locates consciousness (subjectivity). The two occurrences are concomitant and simultaneous.

This model of quantum consciousness recalls the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, who proposed that the entities that compose this universe have simultaneously a subjective and an objective nature. He used the language of subjectivity to describe the precipitation of actual events from indeterminacy. In Whitehead’s philosophy an actual event occurs through the concrescence of "prehensions" into a "satisfaction" of feeling. He called his philosophy the "philosophy of organism" to capture the simultaneity of objectivity and subjectivity in the concrescence of events. Unfortunately, Whitehead's followers adopted the term "process philosophy" instead of "philosophy of organism" and thereby marginalized an intended implication of Whitehead's thought.

The star larvae hypothesis adds a layer of conjecture to this already speculative construction. It proposes that the dream state, specifically the lucid dream state, and more specifically the amplified communal lucid dream state, has a particular efficacy in terms of the observer effect of quantum mechanics, in which human intent can affect the outcome of quantum processes. The lucid dream is taken to be that brand of consciousness most efficacious at influencing quantum events through intent. And it is therefore the state of mind best suited to conjuring protons from the quantum fluctuations that produce Hawking radiation.

Physicist Wolf goes so far as to suggest that, just as events precipitate out of quantum indeterminacy to participate in the physical universe, so too do psychological selves precipitate out of the range of possibilities presented in the dream state, to participate in a subjective universe, a notion that carries theological overtones. It recalls the idea from various religious traditions of a cosmic mind.

Such a notion also derives from the collaborative work of Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff. Leveraging their model of cosmic consciousness, astrophysicist Paola Zizzi proposes that, in the earliest moments of the Big Bang, the mass of the entire universe-to-be was for a brief moment superposed in a quantum coherent state. This state of superposition corresponds to what is called the inflationary phase of the early universe, a phase of very rapid expansion which has become a standard feature of the Big Bang cosmology. Zizzi proposes that this primordial indeterminacy collapsed in an objective reduction that would have been accompanied by an instance of cosmic subjectivity, or what Stuart Hameroff calls "the Big Wow." The theological implications of this idea are evident. Zizzi explains her phenomenological interpretation of the Big Bang at http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0007006.

Whitehead's process philosophy includes a theology compatible with all of these ideas. In it God has three natures: a primordial nature in which God plays the role of thaumaturge and which seems to correspond to Zizzi's phenomenological interpretation of inflationary cosmology. God's second nature, his consequent nature, is in process of becoming and corresponds to the actual evolution of the physical universe, including the subjective experiences of the creatures. Once these experiences occur, they are knowable and become data in God's memory. God's third nature is superjective and is the lure that God dangles before the universe to (try to) nudge it to elaborate increasingly novel and aesthetically intense occurrences.

Space, time, matter and energy are not fundamental in this model and neither is a consciousness such as the theologians ponder. These things, rather, are attributes of what is fundamental, which is life. Life underlies the objectively physical and the subjectively mental. It's that process that enlists space, time, energy, matter and experience to select from the set of potentials that subset that becomes actual, that occurs as series of determinate events. The universe is an achievement.

The Retrieval of Metanarrative

Grand historiographic systems, such as Whitehead's, constitute what in academic theory is called "metanarrative." The term refers to an overarching organizing concept that bestows a plot to the events of history. Examples include

• Marxism, in which history is a competition among social classes
• Analytic psychology (Freud), in which history is competition between civilization and its discontents (the repressed drives of the Id)
• Darwinism, in which (natural) history is a competition among species and/or individuals and/or genes for material resources
• The Enlightenment, in which history is a competition between scientific rationalism and religious superstition
• Christianity, in which history is a competition between God and Satan
• . . . and so on.

Deconstructive and postmodern academic theorists tend to dismiss metanarratives in favor of more anarchic/ironic interpretations of historical events.

But the star larvae hypothesis is a blatant metanarrative in which history is a competition between novelty and habit and between materialism and mysticism, but which subordinates all such notions to the ontogenetic life cycle of this universe (and of all universes in the metaverse). The grand narrative plot is, admittedly, religious. It includes such hallmarks of religion as an unfolding of events that serves cosmic purposes, ascent to the heavens, and the transcendence of the flesh. However, unlike religious narratives, this plot requires the participation of science. It enlists science to articulate principles that describe the behaviors of matter and energy in ways in which engineers can exploit. The deepest yearnings of the religious sensibility indeed show the way. But only the ingenuity and applied methods of science can satisfy those yearnings. Even the most purebred Rortian pragmatist, who would not bother with the theory behind the star larvae hypothesis, should be able to line up behind the hypothesis on purely pragmatic grounds, because it describes a utopian—a super-utopian—future built on the momentum of Western civilization.

NEXT > Cyberfetus Rising

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